Bavarese alla Frutta -- Fruity Bavarian Cream
This is a basic fruit Bavarese that can be made with a number of different kinds of fruit, for example peaches, strawberries, blueberries, cherries, persimmons, peaches, or apricots, either singly or in the combination that you prefer. The recipe is drawn from De Agostini's La Mia Cucina, and will take about an hour to prepare, plus several hours' chilling time. You'll need a scale, and:
- 8 sheets fish glue (fish glue is gelatin; it weighs about 5 grams, a fifth of an ounce, per sheet, which means about 1 3/5 ounces gelatin)
- 1 cup water
- 10 ounces (250 g) freshly pureed fruit
- 1 cup (100 g) powdered sugar without starch or other ingredients
- The juice of a lemon
- 1 1/4 (300 ml) cups whipped cream
You'll want ripe, flavorful fruit. Peel it if need be, pit it, and blend it or put it through a strainer, and then weigh it. While you're doing this, soak the gelatin in cool water. Once the gelatin has soaked for at least 20 minutes, transfer it to a small pot without squeezing it, add the cup of water, and heat, gently stirring, until it is completely dissolved. Let it cool. Pour the fruit puree into a bowl and mix the sugar into it. Then add the cool gelatin and the lemon juice a little at a time, and finally fold in the whipped cream. Transfer the mixture to a mold and chill it well.
Come time to unmold it, dip the mold into hot water for a few seconds and invert it onto a serving dish. Decorate it as you see fit, and serve.
A note: this recipe calls for quite a bit of gelatin. Contrary to what you might think, if a dish has lots of solids, for example the pureed fruit here, it requires more gelatin to set it.
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